


reasons of which reason knows nothing

by ships_to_sail



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 04:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17780333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: SVU had seen its share of hard cases and long weeks, cases going sour and none of the chips falling their way, no matter how much they prepared. But the past month had kicked them all in the teeth, which is part of what made the valentines seem so out of place at first.ORSonny actually *didn't* hand out any valentines, but nobody believes him.





	reasons of which reason knows nothing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Robin Hood (kjack89)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/gifts).



> For RH, who not only came up with one of the best parts of this whole thing, but who deserves a fluffy valentines more than anyone. <3
> 
> Usual disclaimers apply and be sure to tip your ficcers!

SVU had seen its share of hard cases and long weeks, cases going sour and none of the chips falling their way, no matter how much they prepared. But the past month had kicked them all in the teeth, which is part of what made the valentines seem so out of place at first. 

Sonny almost didn’t notice them at first amongst the towers of backlogged reports and research files that crowded every desk on the floor. He was just booting up his laptop, thinking through how much longer he had before he’d need to microwave his cup of coffee, when Amanda came up behind him and tapped him on his left shoulder before ducking around to his right — and he was tired enough, she actually got away with it.

“Haha,” he said, spinning in his chair and stretching his long arms overhead with a groan. “Jesse teach you that one?”

“Please. I taught her. If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t actually think it was going to work.”

“Well, if I were any less tired, it wouldn’t have.”

“Tell me about it. Not home until almost midnight last night only to remember - I promised cupcakes for Jesse’s class. Gluten free cupcakes, no less, because of course.”

Carisi rolled his eyes and scoffed, but kept his mouth shut. He didn’t have it in him to do the “what’s the point of bread without gluten” speech, and it wouldn’t be the first time Amanda had heard it anyway. “So how’d they turn out?”

Amanda took a long swing from the to-go mug in her hand and shrugged, the slightest blush creeping onto the edges of her cheeks. “No idea. Had the nanny stop by Magnolia Bakery on her way to drop off.”

Sonny whistled low between his teeth. “Lucky Jesse.”

Amanda punched him gently in the shoulder. “Yeah, well, not all of us have the time to keep up at work and still pass out valentines to everyone, alright? Not all of us have that Carisi magic.”

Sonny gestured at the desk behind him, the entire surface of which was one wrong move away from being completely swallowed by paperwork. “I wouldn’t exactly call this keeping up. And what are you talking about, valentines? You mean the cannoli yesterday, because I told you you’d have to pay me back for that.”

“Yeah, alright Sonny. So this,” Amanda reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a small, holographic piece of cardstock with a brightly colored piece of pizza drawn across the front. Sonny can barely make out ‘YOU’VE GOT A PIZZA MY HEART’ in loopy letters along the bottom, “has nothing to do with you?”

Sonny bit his lip to keep from smiling at the bad pun and shook his head. “Wish I could take credit, Rollins, but I swear - this one wasn’t me.”

“Okay, fine, keep your little secrets,” she said, taking care to fold the valentine along the crease before putting it gently into her pocket. Without warning, she leaned forward and placed a quick kiss to the top of Sonny’s head. “Thanks,” she whispered into his ear before she gave him a quick wink and walked away.

Sonny couldn’t help the blush in his cheeks, or the small smile that settled into the corner of his mouth as Amanda made her way back to her desk. It was a cute valentine and if she wanted to give him credit for it, it certainly hadn’t worked to argue against her. He put it in the corner of his brain where he stuffed weird one-offs he wouldn’t have to think about anymore and made took a deep breath before diving into the case report on the top of the pile next to him.

*

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Oh, come on Fin. Play nice.”

“Hey. I’m all for playing nice, Lieu, but - you’ve got to be kidding me?”

“What he did was nice, is it really going to kill you to return the sentiment?”

“Normally? Nah. To another dude, and a dude I work with no less?”

“Alright, well if it’s really that big a threat to your masculinity-”

Sonny Carisi, perennial king of well-timed entrances, chose that moment to round the corner and lean himself against the doorway to Olivia’s office, attention clearly perked. “What’s a threat to Fin’s masculinity?”

Olivia snorted at the same time that she shrugged her shoulders, wide grin splitting across her face. Fin rolled his eyes, crossing his arms across his chest and sitting back on the corner of Olivia’s desk.

“Ohhhhkay,” Sonny drawled, confused, his gaze darting back and forth between the grumpy Fin and the practically jovial lieutenant. 

“Did you need something, Carisi?”

“Yeah, the ADA’s office just faxed over the most recent notes on the Hernandez case - I gotta tell you, Liv, this thing is a mess. I cannot wait for Barba to get back from his conference.”

“That so,” Olivia said, eyebrow shooting towards her hairline. Sonny’s feelings weren’t exactly a secret around the precinct, but they still seemed to be completely oblivious to Barba and, besides, weren’t something he generally made a habit of shouting from the rooftops. 

Sonny clicked his tongue and tried to shrug it off. “Not like that, Liv, it’s just - you know no one in that office can do the kind of work he does.”

“I’ll give you that, without a doubt. But for the foreseeable future, we don’t have Barba. So just do what you can to clean up the report and get it to me before you leave today? I know you guys are swamped but I need this to take priority, alright?”

“Sure thing, boss.” Carisis spun on his heel.

“Oh, and Carisi? Thanks.”

“For what?”

Olivia smiled slyly as she slid open the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a square of paper that looked suspiciously like the one Amanda had confronted him with this morning. “You’re Dino-mite”, she read with smile. “That’s really cute, Sonny. Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Fin said, clearing his throat and slipping yet another damning scrap of paper out of the inner pocket of his jacket. He held it up so Sonny could see the bright green cactus and black block script screaming “YOU LOOK SHARP” beneath it. “Happy Valentine’s Day, dude,” Fin said through almost-clenched teeth. 

Sonny wanted to hang his head in his hands. It wasn’t that the idea of giving valentines to his coworkers was the worst he’d ever heard — there had been another detective in Queens SVU who had done something similar — but there was something about the fact that he hadn’t thought about it that made it that much. It was like he was doubly offended, first that they would just assume that it had been him, and secondly because he hadn’t been the one to think of it.

“It probably won’t make a difference if I tell you it wasn’t me, will it?”

Olivia and Fin shared a glance before they both looked at him seriously, as if actually weighing the answer to his question.

“Doubt it,” Fin said at the same time that Olivia said, “It’s worth a shot.” They spared him the indecency of laughing at him. Sonny just nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets on his way back to his desk. At the last minute he decided to take a detour by the coffee pot. He needed to stay on his feet, needed to keep working out the sour knot that had taken up home in the pit of his stomach.

Someone was passing out valentines to the SVU detectives and letting him take the credit — or blame, depending on who you asked. Which was weird enough in it’s own right, but not what pushed the bile up the back of his throat or made the corner of his eyes feel weirdly hot and tight.

No, that benefit resided in the singular fact that, whoever the mystery valentine giver was, they apparently didn’t see fit to leave one for Sonny. And the sheer intensity of how much that hurt him bothered him. 

*

“Detective Carisi?”

“Carmen? Hey! Those files got here just fine a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh good. I’m glad to hear that.”

“Yep.” Silence filled the line as Sonny finished the last bit of paperwork and slammed his third cleaned-up file shut, adding it to the still pitifully small ‘done’ pile. He rolled his shoulders back and stifled a pained groan as something in his hip twinged. “Was there something else you needed?”

“Oh, nothing official. I just wanted to call and say thank you.”

Sonny bit back a groan of a completely different kind and ran the hand not holding the phone across his eyes. “Not you, too?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing, Carmen. Let me guess - a valentine?”

“Of course,” Carmen said, the smallest bit of confusion creeping into the back of her voice. “I was a little surprised to see that Mr. Barba told you, but I really appreciate it.”

“Told me what?”

“‘Paws-itively awesome’,” Carmen read. “With a picture of a corgi. They’re my favorite, I assumed Mr. Barba told you.”

“If only,” Sonny said, tired, the first inklings of a thought tickling at the back of his brain. “Hate to tell you this, though, Carmen, but the valentine isn’t from me. I’m glad you love it, though.”

Carmen laughed. “You’re too humble, detective.” She didn’t say anything else before she hung up, so Carisi didn’t have the chance to assure her that, no really, the card wasn’t from him. But it was from someone, someone who knew the people he worked with.

Still feeling the growing thought at the back of his mind, he crossed to Amanda’s desk and waited for her to finish a phone call. “Hey Rollins, can I see that valentine again?”

“You mean the valentine you gave me?”

“Shut up and hand me the card.”

She laughed and fished it out from underneath a stack of paper on her desk. Sonny saw the same neon pizza and bad pun as before and was handing it back when he saw the cramped, scrawled ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ along the bottom of the card.

And he felt his stomach plummet through the floor. Amanda may not have recognized the handwriting enough to place it, but Sonny sure as hell did. He’d spent enough late nights staring at it over the last few months, yellow legal pads full of the squat, compact script walking him through increasingly complicated legal precedent. One part of the puzzle clicked together in his mind while whatever bitter creature had wrapped itself around the base of his spine reared up violently. He passed the valentine back to Amanda with a tense smile and stalked back to the locker room, slipping his cell out of his pocket as he went.

“Hello?” Barba picked up on the third ring.

“What the hell did you do?”

“Detective Carisi? Do you want to be a little more specific?”

“Just stop it, Counselor. We both know what you did.” Rafael went silent and Sonny could hear a bunch of hustle and bustle behind him. “Where are you, anyway? I thought you were at your conference until the end of the week?”

“I told you to be careful with that whole ‘thinking’ business. Besides,” Rafael voice lowered conspiratorially, “assuming I do know what you’re talking about, I think the common response to such an event would be ‘thank you’.”

“Thank you,” Carisi forced out past the ball in his throat and the clench of his jaw. “Everyone else really loved their valentines. So much so that they spent the day thanking ME for them because they think I’m responsible.”

Rafael chuckled. “Yeah, I thought there was a chance that might happen.” 

Sonny dropped onto one of the metal benches in the locker room. “Then why? If you weren’t even going to be here, why bother? Don’t tell me the great Rafael Barba was feeling particularly sentimental.”

The pause on the line was long enough that Carisi was worried he’d actually hit a nerve. When Rafael spoke again, his voice was lower and something unexpectedly soft crept in at the edges. “I may not be a sentimental sap, detective, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely without a heart. You remember the Kingsbury case?”

“Little girl being abused by her sister’s boyfriend, yeah I remember. Wasn’t that over at New Years?”

“For the most part. But I was in their area for another case a few weeks ago and went to check in on them.” Barba hadn’t been able to secure a conviction and Sonny knew he always took the losses hard. “While I was there the little girl, Sarah, slipped a valentine into my hand and I just felt. Good. In this small way, like it was a little bit of actual joy I could put in my pocket and walk out that building with. And we don’t get a lot of that in this line of work.” His voice was so soft, almost dreamy, like he’d forgotten there was someone listening on the other end of the line. Sonny had never heard him sound like that before, and wanted to hear it again and again, that voice that belonged to the secret, soft parts of Rafael. The man on the other end of the line cleared his throat and the magic of the moment was gone. “Anyway. I figured I probably wasn’t the only one who could use a little boost like that.”

“So you bought valentines?”

“I had Carmen buy the valentines. Except for Carmen’s, of course. That one I did manage all on my own.”

“...which is why she assumed it was me, and not you. Because she’d already bought yours for you.” He didn’t really need Rafael to confirm, he was more speaking to himself, but that didn’t stop the other man from making a little hum of acknowledgement. 

“Was there anything else you needed, Carisi, or were you just calling to yell at me?”

“I wasn’t calling to yell,” he said, deflated. Ignoring the fact that he’d begun the conversation yelling. “I just. I don’t like everyone giving me all this praise for something I didn’t even do.”

“Well you can tell them it was me but you and I both know how likely they are to believe that. I’m truly sorry it’s made you uncomfortable, but we both know it’s something you would have done. 

Sonny didn’t have an answer to that. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“So. There’s nothing else?” 

Later, Sonny would say it was something in Rafael’s voice that made him ask, not the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach that just wouldn’t go away. “Where’s mine?” He hated how whiny his voice sounded, how impossible it was to keep the hurt out, how small it sounded as silence fell on the other end of the line.

“What?”

“I don’t get it. Everyone got one but me.”

The silence this time was so long, Carisi had to double check that he hadn’t dropped the call. “You haven’t been to your locker today?”

Sonny’s heart jumped into his throat, his vision seeming to darken around the edges until all he could see was his locker. The locker he opened more days than not, but that he’d skipped that day because he’d just been so behind on paperwork. His fingers tremble as he twists the combination lock, and he can hear Rafael breathing on the other end of the line.

At first, all he could see was red. Red, heart-shaped balloons shoved amongst his extra dress shirts on the bottom, a bouquet of slightly wilted red roses lying next to his spare socks on the top shelf, small bits of red streamers and confetti falling to the floor at his feet. And in the middle of it all, a card taped to the shelf, his name written on the front in the same cramped handwriting that had given the game away. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Rafael said in his ear and Sonny jumped. His face felt hot, his heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. He could hear his breath in his own ears, and his tongue felt heavy in his mouth. He hadn’t been expecting-

“Rafael,” he started, unsure of how he was going to finish the sentence he’d started. “You didn’t have to-”

“Of course I didn’t. I didn’t have to do any of it. But I did. Read the card.”

Sonny gently undid the tape that held the card to the shelf and flipped it over, freeing the flap and pulling the thick card out of the envelope. He turned it over and laughed, an adorable kitten with arms outstretched, the words “I LOVE YOU THIS MUCH” stamped beneath it. Inside, Rafael had printed:

“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” - Blaise Pascal

Forlini’s.

8:30.

“I know you think I don’t see you, Sonny. But you’re the only person I want to see. Tonight? You’ll be there?”

He didn’t know how Rafael had managed to do all this, how no one had seen him do all this, but he didn’t care. He didn’t really want to know. He wanted to hold on to the idea of just a little Valentine’s Day magic. He’d cheered up the squad and filled Sonny’s chest with a kind of warmth he wasn’t used to. And he wanted to meet Sonny for dinner.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”


End file.
